It's that time of the year again ! We've just started a new RealBird sweepstake and this time we are giving away a Google Nexus 7 tablet.

Rules are the same as before: refer as many of your real estate colleagues to RealBird as you can. When they sign up for a free RealBird account, you will get one point for each and for those who upgrade to RealBird PRO, you will get 10 extra points. You can also get 10 extra points for leaving a RealBird testimonial. Every point you gather during the contest is a distinct entry in the sweepstake, so the more you collect, the more chance you have to win. And of course, all the points you have so far for referring colleagues in the past wil count as well.

On the Rewards page, use the social media sharing buttons and the email form to share your special RealBird invite link. When new members sign up with RealBird, your referral ID will be registered and the reward points will be awarded to you.

Submit a RealBird testimonial here regarding how RealBird helps your business and additional 10 points will be assigned to you

Today is the last business day of 2011 and we thought it is the good time to summarize the main new RealBird features that we launched in 2011.

Switched the RealBird Property Search from Google Base to Oodle data

As you may recall Google suddenly announced in January '11 the discontinuation of Google Base. Because the RealBird Property Search was based on data from Google Base, we had to find another solution. We successfully ported the application to use real estate data from Oodle, soft launched in March and made it available for all RealBird members in June. The new search application has been working great ever since and has delivered thousands and thousands of buyer leads to RealBird members.

New listing inventory widget replaced the old version, with color themes and custom transition effects

We retired one of our legacy sidebar listing inventory widgets and replaced it with a brand new one, which can be configured with custom color theme and custom transition effects.

The first version of the RealBird Mobile Real Estate Website was launched

The second version of the Mobile Real Estate Website added Property Search support

Soon after the initial launch, we also completed the mobile user interface for the RealBird Property Search and added to the RealBird Mobile Property Website service. Update to the platform (and the new desktop IE support) also made it possible from then on to embed the mobile real estate website on regular blogs and pages with the handy RealBird widget, including the inclusion of the QR code and a call-for-action message.

Default Property Website Theme editor added

One of the powerful features of the RealBird single property websites has always been the versatile theme editor. We realized however that even with the easy-to-use interface, it has been an unnecessary hassle to set up the custom design for each listing one by one, so we introduced the same powerful theme editor tool as a global configuration option. In other words, RealBird members can now set up a default custom design once and all new property sites will inherit this theme.

Introduced 3 Facebook Real Estate Page applications

Just in time for Facebook's application platform overhaul during the summer, we released three Facebook applications for different RealBird services. You can now easily add your listing inventory widget, map-based property search and your mobile real estate website to your Facebook business page.

Diligent SEO work brought major results: video thumbnails of your property websites are now shown on Google

We've been always focusing on SEO best practices, but 2011 brought some break throughs: Finally, over 1 million pages on RealBird has been indexed by Google and to our great surprise, RealBird became one of the few real estate information providers whose pages have been enhanced with video thumbnails on the Google search result pages. This is a very positive and stunning SEO news and together with the high ranking of the RealBird property websites, it represents a major improvement in visibility for our members.

We also introduced a small, but powerful feature for RealBird PRO members. The RealBird map-based property search can now be configured to show your own featured listings as "sticky", highlighted icons on the map. We call them "sticky" icons, because they are shown on the map independently from the actual search criteria, as long as their location falls within the current map boundaries. This a great, non-intrusive advertisement of your own properties to home buyers using your map search.

United Kingdom coverage added to RealBird

We also extended support for most of the RealBird services for estate agents in the United Kingdom. With this launch, RealBird now provides online marketing services to US, Canada and UK agents and brokers.

Brand new, major redesign of the flagship RealBird single property website platform launched

It's been a long time coming and finally, in October, we launched a major redesign of our flagship RealBird Listing Publisher property website platform. The system has many, many improvements and new features, while remaining fully backward compatible: new layout design, improved SEO, improved load speed, deeper social media integration, better lead capture, more automatic integration with 3rd party services such as Walkscore, ability to add more custom pages and content and many more features. We were very happy to receive an overwhelmingly positive response from all of our members regarding this major update.

New Craigslist property ad generator released

A revamped Craigslist property ad generator was launched in November, making it much easier for RealBird members to create a Craigslist ad with unlimited color theme options. Craigslist is one of the most popular classifieds ad platforms and this new tool makes it way easier to create much better looking ads for your RealBird listings.

SMS keyword property marketing added to your mobile marketing toolkit

Just in time for the holiday season, we added a new listing marketing service to the RealBird mobile toolkit. We integrated RealBird with the leading SMS technology provider, Twilio and introduced SMS keyword marketing for your properties with an amazing, automatic lead capture feature.

Last but not least, 7,616 real estate professionals joined RealBird in 2011. This is our highest yearly registration number ever and we thank you all very much (long time and new members as well) for trusting your real estate marketing on the RealBird platform.

Just in two weeks, over 1,000 mobile real estate websites were created on RealBird. That's more than amazing. Thank you all for making this happen !

In the meantime, another milestone has been reached. Actually it was passed without us noticing it a few days ago. We are pleased to announce that the the 100,000th RealBird single property website was created on March 13, 2011 6:24AM. The current count is now at 102,478. It's been growing fast ever since. This count includes both US and Canadian listings.

Over the weekend, we also launched a new feature for the mobile real estate websites. Besides your active properties, your mobile website now shows your pending and sold listings as well. If you had an active listing published via RealBird which is now pending sale or was sold recently, you can change its status through the Edit page. It only takes a few clicks. It will not only show up on your mobile site under the Pending or Sold category, but doing so will also imrpove your SEO: by maintaining that page for longer period of time and via the cross promotion with your listings that are currently on the market.